A jargon-free journey through the world of social media.

Klout

June 17, 2011

This week, social media scorecard Klout added LinkedIn activity to it's calculations, which already included Facebook and Twitter. It seems like a move to legitimize Klout as professionally relevant and not just a bragging-rights tool for self-promotional Twitterati.

Since Klout started getting buzz in 2010, social media professionals have been debating its value as barometer of influence. I've been pretty skeptical myself about how Klout determines its score for Twitter usage and impact.

However, as a way to quantify the strength of your professional network and online résumé, now that the tool factors in LinkedIn? That's a service I can get behind.

The clear winner from this partnership isn't necessarily Klout, though. By becoming part of the Klout scoring engine, LinkedIn suddenly got a much-needed game mechanic that might motivate many of us to actually start using LinkedIn for something other than accepting network requests.

Klout's blog explains that your score is not based on the amount of time spent logged in to LinkedIn or your number of connections, but the quality of it all, it will obviously serve as a boost to the service.

You can check out the Klout blog to learn more about the addition. I'm curious to hear your perspective on Klout, LinkedIn and how this partnership of sorts could affect the popularity of both services.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.